My Life and Thoughts

OK, Bay-Area aspiring criminals: you think you’re pretty good. But how do you know for sure? Maybe you’re good enough to swipe an unattended laptop in the library—but are you good enough to walk out of a casino with $100,000 of sports memorabilia? By the time you learn the answer, it could be too late.

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The week of 11/26, I will be joining n+1 magazine for the Bay Area segment of their West Coast tour:

• Tuesday 11/27, 3-5pm, University of San Francisco, Kendrick Hall (Law School), Room 102.
• Wednesday 11/28, 4-5:30pm, Stanford University, Margaret Jacks Hall (Bldg 460), Terrace Room.
• Thursday 11/29, 6-8pm, Berkeley University, 141 McCone Hall (near North Gate).

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I am a great admirer of My Life on the D-List, the reality TV show featuring stand-up comedian Kathy Griffin. The show dramatizes Griffin’s major source of comic material: her own marginal interactions with “A-list” celebrities, who always remain, like Godot, just outside the picture. One episode opens with a monologue about how Griffin was supposed to present an award to Renée Zellweger, whose assistant then called the network and asked for a different presenter (“and I said, ‘Whatever that sweaty, puffy coke whore wants, she should get’”). The episode proceeds to document Griffin’s receipt of a truly enormous crate of long-stem roses, signed: “Warmest wishes, Renée Zellweger.” Griffin ponders the significance of these roses (silencer, peace offering, anthrax delivery vehicle), first at home with her mom, and then in Chevy’s Fresh Mex with her gay friends (who describe Zellweger’s gift as “a modern day Rubik’s cube”); Griffin calls the florist to ask how much the roses cost ($520); Griffin and her assistant brainstorm possible thank-you notes.

Griffin’s treatment of Renée Zellweger reminded me, in certain ways, of Tolstoy’s treatment of Napoleon in War and Peace.

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When we were in Barcelona, I gave my traveling companion another chance to prove what a good sport he is, by dragging him on a day trip to the Benedictine monastery at Montserrat. Here, one day in the sixteenth century, St. Ignatius of Loyola almost threw himself into a hole in his room, because of his inability to stop writing his spiritual confessions. This was an important moment in the history of graphomania.
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From early February to mid-May, 2007, I suffered from a delusion that I would be unable to complete my dissertation until I read the 6-volume commentary to Don Quijote by Diego Clemencín, a 19th-century scholar whose annotations are based on his experiences attempting to read every single chivalric romance known to Cervantes. This took him so long that he actually died. The commentary was published posthumously by his sons.

I don’t know why I thought it was necessary for me to study the failed chivalric romances that Cervantes was parodying. Definitely, nobody told me to do it. It took a really long time, and so far has yielded two concrete gains:

1. I got better at reading Spanish.
2. While flipping through a library copy of Tirant lo blanc, a little-known Catalan romance mentioned in Don Quijote, I found a $100 bill.

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